Davide Botto

Davide Botto is the Principal Double-bass of the Orchestra and Filarmonica ’900 del Teatro Regio, Turin, and Professor of double bass at the city’s Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi. Born in 1965, he studied under Elio Veniali, receiving his degree in double bass at the age of eighteen. He went on to study with Franco Petracchi, first at the Accademia Walter Stauffer in Cremona and then at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, where he obtained his Diploma di Merito and a full scholarship. At the same time, he pursued studies in history and literature at the University of Turin, graduating cum laude.

In 1983 he was the only Italian double-bass player selected for the European Community Youth Orchestra (ECYO, now EUYO), with which he toured the most important European and Asian cities under Leonard Bernstein and Claudio Abbado. As a soloist, he performed a large part of Bottesini’s repertoire, both with piano and orchestra. He is one of the founders of the bass sextet Basspartout, with whom he performed nearly a hundred concerts, in a performance that combines theater and virtuosity. He has a wide chamber music repertoire, that also includes Schubert’s c major Quintet D 956, in which he plays the second cello’s part.

 Having held classes in many Italian conservatories and in several development courses and having successfully auditioned for the post of principal double-bass at the Orchestra Sinfonica della RAI in Rome, the Arena in Verona, and Teatro Regio, Turin, he received the Carlo Capriata Prize in 2009, awarded annually to a distinguished Italian double-bass player.

 In 2011 he recorded Rota’s Divertimento concertante for the the British label Chandos with the conductor Gianandrea Noseda and the Filarmonica ‘900 del Teatro Regio di Torino, getting worldwide appreciation (BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone, International Record Review, Ritmo, Classic Voice, Internazionale, Archi Magazine, The Record Geijutsu). The BBC Music Magazine writes: …the Divertimento concertante…puts the instrument – magnificently played here by Davide Botto – through prodigious feats of bravura and unexpected lyric appeal. Classic Voice: …the Divertimento concertante of 1973, actually a double bass concerto in four movements, finds in Davide Botto, the principal double bass of the orchestra, an uncommonly sensitive and imaginative performer. In 2011, on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Rota, he performed the same Divertimento concertante for the symphonic season of the Teatro Regio, still with Gianandrea Noseda and the Filarmonica ’900.

In 2013 he held classes at the home of NHK Orchestra, Tokyo, and at the University of Georgia, Athens USA, where he also gave a solo recital with some unpublished music by Annibale Mengoli, of whom he made an edition for the British publisher Recital Music. Invited by Thomas Martin, in 2014 he has been a guest teacher at the Birmingham Conservatoire, UK. Davide Botto plays an instrument made by Antonio Artioli in Milan, in 1892.